Martial Races

Abstract

Under imperial rule, various South Asian communities were identified as “martial races” and extensively recruited to the colonial military. Recruits from these communities, including Nepalese Gurkhas and Punjabi Sikhs, provided the bulk of the military forces that sustained British rule in India through the late‐nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Several such communities continue to provide significant sources of recruits. Martial race theories—which posited that only certain Indian groups were capable of undertaking military service—were widely circulated in imperial culture. Such theories reflected contemporary notions of “racial science” but also helped to rationalize imperial reliance on native recruits.